Torghan sat in the firelight warming his hand against the fire. As a boy, these four boundaries had been his entire universe, a fortress against the biting teeth of the mountain winter. Now, with the weight of Yarzat in his bones, they seemed diminished, what had once appeared mountains were now scarcely taller than the meadow grass, fragile and cramped.
It was a peculiar, aching hollow to feel like a ghost in the very rooms that had birthed him.But perhaps that was simply life, for what once was, can easily one day be not.
He averted his gaze from a familiar crack in the timber, a mark that had been there since his first memories, to look upon his eldest brother. The resemblance to their father was striking, yet the man stood with a hesitant, uncertain air.
His brother's eyes wandered over Torghan, struggling to reconcile the memory of the scrawny, soot-covered kid who had chased herds through the scree with the iron-clad warrior who sat before him now.
